BeagleWorks is an office suite that offers a word processor, draw, paint, spreadsheet with chart creation, database, and communications. It was purchased by WordPerfect Corporation in 1992, and eventually became WordPerfect Works. This was later sold off to Novell. BeagleWorks was released a little late in the game. Other major office suites, like Microsoft Office, ClarisWorks, and GreatWorks, were already available.
After a false start in February, BeagleWorks is officially out of the gate to compete in the healed integrated-software arena. The combination word-processing, spreadsheet, database, communications, and drawing/painting package distinguishes itself from its rivals by using a unique, customized implementation of pubish-and-subscribe to integrate its modules.
The Good News
For some tasks, BeagleWorks' use of publish-and-subscribe outshines the integration method used by its rivals, ClarisWorks and GreatWorks. For starters, BeagleWorks uses an enhanced implementation of puhlish-and-subscribe that makes the process easier to learn and use. You can publish an edition and subscribe to it, for example, without encountering any intervening dialog boxes — a method that works almost as transparently as cut-and-paste.
Although GreatWorks offers a similar customized version of publish-and-subseribe, BeagleWorks goes several steps beyond GreatWorks by providing in-context editing and an all-purpose frame tool.
With in-context editing, you can directly modify the data inside a subscribing frame without returning to the original publishing document. In addition, with the frame tool, you can create subscribing frames and position them within documents simply by clicking and dragging. This technique, which works in a similar fashion to ClarisWorks' use of frame tools, lets you bypass the standard pub1ish-and-subscribe procedure.
BeagleWorks' approach has one significant advantage over ClarisWorks frames. Because ClarisWorks frames don't use publish-and-subscribe, they must all exist within the same document to work together. BeagleWorks frames, on the other hand, can access data from separate documents.
BeagleWorks' publish-and-subscribe is active in every module except for the communications one (although the word processor is limited to subscribe only), and you don't have to be running under System 7 to use it — the BeagleWorks implementation works with System 6.
That's the good news. The bad news is that BeagleWorks' total reliance on publish-and-subscribe as an integration vehicle can turn simple tasks such as adding an editable graphic to a word-processing document into time-consuming multistep chores. By contrast, ClarisWorks and GreatWorks make a common tool palette of drawing and text tools available across modules, so you can create text boxes and graphics almost effortlessly and edit them within any document type.
BeagleWorks also uses a tool bar, but its options shift as you change modules and you can use only options relevant to the module you're working with. Another drawback is the unwieldy collection of edition files and publisher documents that builds up on your drive.
Taken individually, the BeagleWorks modules vary widely in quality. The word processor is clearly the shining star. It's the only one of the integrated packages that can subdivide a text document into separate, independently formatted sections (even on the same page). BeagleWorks is also the only program in the group that can run text around the borders of frames and pictures, even following irregular contours. Furthermore, you can separately define character and paragraph styles.
The program's spreadsheet module is also impressive, featuring an auto-sum tool; variable row, height, and column widths: and options for adding borders, shading, and text notes to cells. However, it suffers from one glaring weakness — its charting functions. Charts aren't automatically updated when data changes in the worksheet. Moreover, charts exist as separate documents in the drawing module. As a result, when you manually update charts, enhancements you’ve made in the drawing module are deleted as the program redraws the new chart.
BeagleWorks’ database module is decidedly lackluster. It doesn’t provide separate modes for layout design and data entry, making it easy for you to unintentionally alter layouts while entering data. In addition, field alignment is completely inflexible, and with the exception of the memo field, data fields can’t contain more than one line of data. Similarly, field titles can’t be moved separately from the data-entry field, making the process of designing mailing labels incredibly tedious.
The program’s 8-bit-color drawing and painting modules are adequate, but they won’t win any points for polish or depth of features. The painting module is plagued by slow and jerky response, making it difficult to use the paintbrush effectively. Another disappointment is the drawing module’s inability to format individual characters separately within a text box — you can’t boldface individual words, for example. GreatWorks (the only other integrated package that has a painting module) especially outdistances BeagleWorks in this area by featuring designed-oriented tools such as a magic wand. Bézier curves, and gradient fills.
The BeagleWorks communications module uses Apple’s Communications Toolbox. The module’s most distinguishing feature is its scripting option for automating log-ons. ClarisWorks macros can also automate log-ons, but you can't view or edit them once you’ve created them, as you can with BeagleWorks scripts. BeagleWorks also includes a spelling checker and a thesaurus, but we were disappointed to discover that the spelling checker is active only in the word-processing module.
The first iteration of BeagleWorks was withdrawn from the market because of numerous bugs. The new version is more stable, but it’s not completely bug-free. When we tried to capture text in the communications module, the resulting file consisted of unintelligible gibberish. We also encountered minor problems with margin settings and column formatting in the word processor and ran into occasional trouble in the database module. You'll need considerably more than the 900K of memory suggested — even with 1,400K of RAM and only two open documents, we found that BeagleWorks occasionally quit unexpectedly because of insufficient memory.
The Bottom Line
BeagleWorks' reliance on publish-and-subscribe as an integration vehicle has its advantages and disadvantages. To its credit, the program’s publish-and-subscribe is more comprehensive, more flexible, and easier to use than any other program’s implementation to date. For numerous tasks, however, publish-and-subscribe — no matter how well implemented — can make sharing data among modules slower and more awkward than it is with alternative methods.
Moreover, looking beyond the integration method, the quality of the BeagleWorks modules is inconsistent. Although the package sports the best word processor of any integrated package currently available, the database module comes in dead last when compared with the competition. When all is said and done, if you’re looking for an integrated package with the most fully featured collection of modules overall, we recommend GreatWorks. If your first priority is a package that combines the slickest level of integration with a consistent interface across modules, ClarisWorks is your best buy. If you require a versatile word processor and a spreadsheet program but don’t need a strong database module, we can recommend BeagleWorks, but be forewarned — publish-and-subscribe has its limitations as a module integrator.
Landau, Ted. (October 1992). BeagleWorks. MacUser. (pgs. 52-53).
Beagle Bros.
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out of 10 (0 vote)
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beagleworks_1_0_1.zip
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
